


Ichor

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Forced Bonding, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Kidnapping, M/M, Madness, Poisoning, Scars, Self-Harm, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-18 06:33:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3559715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He tells you that he was going to draw a bath and he got dizzy. He sounds ashamed when he says it and you look to the ribbons of cotton gathered at his feet, stained the color of stale tea where the wound has wept. It hurts to see him this way. It hurts to hear him this way. It hurts because you know you’re doing everything you can and it hurts because you know it still isn’t enough.</p>
<p>His strength has always been greater than yours, and isn’t it folly to assume a mortal like you could fly so close to the sun?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ichor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [asongtosaygoodbye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asongtosaygoodbye/gifts).



> This prompt was an absolute gift from the incredibly talented [Mel](http://ego-laqueum-fui.tumblr.com) who suggested a story about Matt taking care of Will, in an effort to repay the kindness Will once showed him. Matt has a hard time letting go, and will go to great lengths not to lose Will again.
> 
> Takes place post-Mizumono, and contains some potentially triggering material, lovelies, so be sure to check the tags. <3

You tell yourself he’s getting better.

On days when he opens his eyes and they’re not glassy, when his cheeks have color in them again and when he turns, sleepy and warm, to press against you where you’ve decided to rest on his bed. Those are the days you look forward to, those are the days you know make all this worth it.

Because he’s getting better. 

Because you’re keeping him safe and he’s getting better.

You spread your hands together, and his palms are just a little clammy and you’re glad that he’s not shaking when you lace your fingers with his. Rubbing his fingertips against your lips, you sigh to warm the remaining chill away from his skin, and when he smiles, your heart falls like it’s in an elevator, dropping down the shaft too quickly. He’s beautiful, on good days or bad days.

Even though he’s thinner than he was before.

Even though the circles under his eyes never go away.

He tells you that he thinks, maybe, he’d like to go for a walk today, and your heart finally stops its freefall when it smashes to the floor. You’re not sure that’s the best idea, you tell him, not with the scar still so fresh on his belly. He could rip his stitches out. He could come down with another infection, like the one before, and you remember how hot the pus seeped from the little holes, running down the threads that hold him together. It mixed with blood when coughing wracked him, and soaked sickly pink into the bandages you quickly changed.

Maybe just a short walk, he suggests again, and instead of chewing your lips to tatters you press them to his hand again.

Maybe, you agree. Maybe if he’s feeling up for it later.

He smiles and it’s enough for you. It’s enough. You let yourself rest with him a little more, even though you should be out, now, feeding the dogs and keeping them company so they don’t come in here and settle on the bed, and bring germs and fur and mud and track it over his pale skin. You worry they will, one day, but you can’t bring yourself to send them away. You can’t bring yourself to do it because on the good days he goes to see them, bundled as he is, he goes to see and he asks you why one is missing and you tell him Buster just ran away.

But today is a good day. Today he can sit up on his own and he only hisses because he slept on his shoulder funny, and smiles, warm, when you offer to massage it.

He lets you.

You do.

And for the first time in weeks, when you press a kiss to his neck he leans back into it, he allows his body to respond, instead of being prisoner to its fevers and nausea and shaking.

He’s so soft beneath your hands, sheltered skin and fading muscles from so long lying in bed. You’ve felt them slowly give way to stark bone, skin pulled taut and shining across it, but you tell yourself that muscle can return after atrophy. You know this from nursing school but you still have to remind yourself when he feels so small, and you touch him only gently.

It’s enough, and he shivers beneath you not from sickness or from cold despite the warmth outside, but from relief at the simple sensation of touch.

You washed his hair for him not long ago, because when you press your nose against his hair he smells like soap rather than sickness, clean and free of the sweat that normally weighs his curls down. You dare, and kiss him again, and when he laughs it’s like the whole shitty world makes sense again, like all the parts that have always been missing from you have been found and returned.

He says he thinks he’s getting better, and you agree. You agree because you’ve heard him laugh and you agree because you have to. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? That’s why you broke out and took down every guard who tried to stop you on the way. That’s why you smeared bloodied hands across dozens of files to find him.

To make him better.

To be the one who never left him.

To show him that you’re the one he needs and that he never should have left to rot.

You force yourself up, even though you don’t want to let go of his skin, scared he will deteriorate when you leave the room. A fear that lingers when you do leave, when you watch him make his way to the bathroom, clinging to the wall because he isn’t used to walking much anymore, but he’s getting better. You know he’s getting better.

In the kitchen you put on the coffee. You set up the toast. You start the eggs.

You fill the five bowls on the floor with whatever is left in the fridge for the dogs to eat. You’ll need to make more. More more more late at night when he’s asleep and you can do nothing but watch him, count his breaths, take his pulse and imagine it matches yours. You don’t sleep because when you do he doesn’t, and you can’t have that, you need him to rest and recover, you need him to be as he was, so you can be together as you promised.

You _promised_.

The eggs aren’t burnt but one corner of the toast is, so you cut it to pieces and pretend one wasn’t there. You stir his coffee with a clean spoon, use a separate one for the sugar, a separate one for the powder that dissolves invisible and tasteless alongside. It will fill his body with warmth, it will close his eyes for a little longer, it will coil him in pain but he will get better, because if you don’t give it to him he will not get up again. He will not smile at you like he did this morning. He will not blink and reach out.

And he has to.

He has to because you promised.

He isn’t in bed when you return and you panic. Your stomach recoils into your throat to see the bed so empty when he’s always there, always, and your hands begin to shake. A soft sound from behind returns them to steady when you remember he went to the bathroom. He isn’t gone, he’s just not here.

You set the plate and cup aside and you go to him, like you always have, like you always will. You settle at his feet where he sits on the edge of the bath, trembling, and it takes a few blinks for him to focus on you. He’s covering his scar with his arms that used to be so powerful - that once gripped the bars between you and flexed as strong as his words when he asked you to kill for him - but you can still see its ugliness marring the stomach you once worshipped at, when the lights were low and the cameras switched off for maintenance. You follow its dark line from rib to hip, you look to the stitches and the scabs, you look to the new shining skin that has appeared in spite of everything.

In spite of you.

He tells you that he was going to draw a bath and he got dizzy. He sounds ashamed when he says it and you look to the ribbons of cotton gathered at his feet, stained the color of stale tea where the wound has wept. It hurts to see him this way. It hurts to hear him this way. It hurts because you know you’re doing everything you can and it hurts because you know it still isn’t enough.

His strength has always been greater than yours, and isn’t it folly to assume a mortal like you could fly so close to the sun?

So you stroke his hair when you stand and you check the temperature of the water. When he is sick into the toilet you try not to listen, but your fingers find the knobs of his spine to soothe him, as if you might give whatever’s left of yourself to make him as whole as he’s made you. He mumbles a curse and thanks in one breath, and you remind him not to lay too long in the water, or the stitches will loosen.

He asks about the dogs. You tell him you’ve fed them and he smiles.

You think maybe, maybe, it will be okay to see them today. If not a walk then just to touch their muzzles and remind him that they’re there, still, waiting still, because they love him, would do anything for him, don’t want to leave him.

Just like you.

His breakfast will get cold but you don’t care, you bring him his coffee. For energy. For something, at least, until he can eat properly. You kneel by the tub as he drinks, watching as the water muddies against his stomach as it works and Will swallows. When he passes the mug back you take it, you don’t want to leave his side so you don’t, right then, you stay as he lets the water hold him, take the ache from his bones, the ache from his scar, the ache from everything but his beautiful mind.

You wonder why your scar has healed so well and his has not. You wonder what filthy God believes you deserve that salvation more.

Outside, it starts to rain, and you watch his face sink, brows furrow, eyes close, as he knows that he cannot walk today, not in this weather, and you hide your relief for it.

The dogs instead, you suggest. In his chair by the fire where he can see them all.

You remember how he looked at you when you first arrived, disbelief and fear. You weren’t where you were supposed to be, hidden away in a silent corner, surrounded by cold stone and stiff iron and filled with drugs to keep you silent. To make you sleep. To make you stop thinking of him but that could never work, and so you hid them under your tongue and spit them out when no one was looking. You told yourself, when he looked at you with all that apprehension, that you'd never let him look at you that way again.

You’d never give him reason to - or at least, you’d never let him think there was reason to.

It’s close enough.

He doesn’t want to ask for help when he’s done so you don’t make him. You’re there already, mug set aside and a clean towel in hand, helping him carefully to his feet so he doesn’t have to pull against the mark that bastard left on him. He’s so light when you help him, you’re so strong, and it all seems so fucking unfair that you could spit in God’s face for the injustice of making him like this, of forcing your hand to make it all right again.

But it is, it is right, it is right, right now. He leans into the towel that you wrap around his shoulders, rubbing gently against paper-thin skin, and with careful steps and gentle hands you help him dress again. You made breakfast, if he’s feeling up for it. Does he want his glasses? Are his feet cold?

Does it hurt?

He sways.

Dizzy again?

You hold him.

He asks to lie down and you let him, sitting on the edge of the bed and setting a palm to his forehead to feel for fever. Lower down to cover his eyes and cool them as well. If you move lower still he would kiss your fingers, like he did through the bars, like he did when he finally understood why you were here.

For him.

For you.

For you both.

You can feel the nausea inflate your chest and close your eyes, you swallow as he does, you turn your knuckles to his cheek and pretend you don't feel the dampness there.

You get the bowl just as he jerks and hold his hair as he's sick again, hands stroking his skin and his back, words stroking deeper still, where you hope he hears and heals. Where you need him to.

You had used the same scar to heal him, as the other had used to kill him. Late at night and the whole house lit bright as you worked and you don't remember what you had in your system then to keep you conscious.

Love maybe.

Promises.

Because you did promise.

But your scar healed and his didn't. And now he's sobbing into the bowl and mumbling words you can't understand and you feel your entire being twist with it.

You tell him you will get the dogs, you'll get them. You tell him you will and he shakes his head but you go anyway. To clean the bowl and empty it, to find the animals and whistle and hope they answer you as they do him.

The medicine - or something like it, anyway - is on the counter where you left it. You don’t try to read the label because you know the world shakes itself apart when you do, but you glare at it anyway. How many months has it been? Too many, and you still can’t get the dosage right. You should be able to do this, you were a fucking nurse. If you know how much to give to make someone well, you should know how much to give them to make them unwell.

But it’s always too much, or not enough. You don’t want to make him this sick, you don’t want him to be sick at all. You just want him to rest, for as long as he needs to get better. You want him to rest for as long as it takes for him to understand, and you’re not sure he does yet. Every time you lower the amount, he starts asking to go. Just a short walk, just to the edge of the woods and back, but you know that it’s only the beginning. After that he’ll want to go into them. After that he’ll want to see the stream again. After that he’ll be well and he’ll leave you, again, just like before.

He calls out, softly, in his tattered voice and he tells you that the toast is perfect.

It shouldn’t be so easy to break someone’s heart, and suddenly you feel just as sick as him. Your stomach knots itself and your gorge rises, acrid and musky in the back of your throat, and you know it’s your own selfish need to be _whole_ \- even at the cost of his muscles and his stomach, even at the cost of the light in his eyes that sometimes dims so much you can do no more than pray.

You haven’t prayed since you were a kid, hoping to heaven or hell - whoever answered first - that you wouldn’t get caught. But you were, often, and punished for it, and you think that maybe it’s what you need to get yourself right again, with God or the Devil or the man sitting in the next room who trusts you more than anyone ever should.

Maybe you don’t have his measurements down right, but you know your own. Four drops, no more than that, from the jug of bleach beneath the sink. It vanishes into the water that fills the glass after, and when you drink it, you curse yourself.

Only yourself, never him.

It’s you that should have done the job right the first time.

It’s you that failed him.

It’s you that wants him to get better and he can’t do that with so much ichor crawling black beneath your skin.

You drink all of it. Then you call the dogs again, close your eyes as your chest burns and your stomach twists and you take it, all of it, because it will make you cleaner, and in making you cleaner it makes him better.

And you promised.

Four dogs on the bed and he doesn’t seem to notice that the other three aren’t there, and you don’t know where they’ve gone, when this morning there were seven. Four dogs and he doesn’t mind, hands out to touch them, to let them lick him. You see his shoulders relax, his eyes droop, his smile soften as it doesn’t so quickly with you.

But it doesn’t matter.

Because he has to get better. He has to be happy, and if the dogs can give him that then you can wait, and one day you will as well.

It coils like a fireball against your throat and you stroke his hair, you touch his cheek, you kiss against his nose and leave him with the creatures to go outside, to take your penance as acid from your lips, hissing on the ground as it leaves you and you deserve it. You deserve to be clean for what you do. You watch it filter through the soil and you wonder where it goes. You wonder if it poisons the trees and kills the grass and how that’s fair.

It isn’t fair.

When you come back there are three dogs in the kitchen and Will isn’t in bed again.

You turn the sheets over, thinking maybe he’s gotten so small that you can’t see him beneath them. You check in the bathroom, worried that the dosage was way too much and he’s sick or unconscious. You check closets. You check upstairs. You check everywhere twice and your throat is hot with every breath you take, burnt with bleach and scalded with uncertainty.

There’s a stich in your side and two dogs watching you from the couch. You press your hand against your ribs and it comes away wet. You were supposed to be better, your skin sewn back together and knitted new. You were supposed to be whole again because he made you that way. You know from nursing school that livers regenerate, and if you could do it to yourself, why couldn’t you fix him, too?

It was a sacrifice, to show him how even mortal wounds in flesh or in spirit or rent between two people can come together again.

It’s a punishment, like Prometheus on the rock, because you dared to steal his fire.

You shove your hand against your side in hopes that it might keep you together just a little longer, and launch yourself out into the grass from the porch. A dog follows out onto the porch, barking as you stand in place and turn and the world spins faster than you and you’re dizzy from the trees and grass and sky all whirling, blinding bright.

The raw flesh that gives beneath your fingers when you tighten them. You think of how you got to touch him today, at least - you got to span your fingers over his shoulders and press your praise in silent kisses to his skin.

It isn’t fair that he’s gone, after you tried so hard to make everything better.

You promised that you would, and how can you when he’s gone?

How can you when you’re alone?

You notice the dog is gone only because the silence is so heavy it chokes you. Or maybe it’s your lungs, those you would have given him next. Or your heart.

But he has that already.

Which is why it isn’t beating in your chest. Which is why your hands don’t move to cooperate when you want to feel your own pulse, restrained by your own mind and your own pain and your own selfishness even though you promised him you would make him better.

Even though promised him _you_ would be better.

The room is the same every other time you wake up in it and it still chokes you, still too close, too small, too cold, and now your wrists are bound, too, and when you struggle - small sounds from your throat you can’t even control anymore - it’s futile. You know the bonds won’t break. You know nothing will happen until you calm down, or they calm you.

You tell yourself he’s getting better.

Somewhere far from here, his wound is healing. He’s getting strong again, and when he awakes his eyes aren’t glassy, and his cheeks are warm. Somewhere far from you, he’s becoming whole again, in spite of everything.

In spite of you.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos to [Mel](http://ego-laqueum-fui.tumblr.com) for the inspiration and prompt, which she kindly sent in support of our [Commissions for Charity](http://wwhiskeyandbloodd.tumblr.com/post/112727577245/wwhiskeyandbloodds-commissions-for-charity-2k15) drive taking place all this March. If you'd like a story from us - whether something new or revisiting other series we've written - [check it out](http://wwhiskeyandbloodd.tumblr.com/post/112727577245/wwhiskeyandbloodds-commissions-for-charity-2k15) and get in touch. We'd love to write for you, and for a good cause to boot!


End file.
